It Takes a Team

I heard of EEG Neurotherapy from my coach (specialized in organizational issues), and started a treatment with Dr. Mary Lee Esty and Dr. Bolea, a Neuropsychologist. After the second or third week there was one day a very significant incident, which led me to believe that I might have finally found the right treatment for whatever ailed me. That day, having returned from one of my bi-weekly sessions, I went back to work and after a little while started to feel that something in the way I was studying was different. After some more time, I realized I was working much faster and in a much more focused manner than usual. Later that evening I had to go to the supermarket, and went through that store as never before. I called Dr. Esty, who explained that such a jump sometimes occurs at the beginning of a treatment but that in a matter of hours I would go back to the old pattern. And the next day, indeed, it felt as if I was living in a slow motion movie. I was back to my old self, but I had had a glimpse of how differently my brain could be working.

At about the same time I started to experience some of the side effects form the drugs that I was still taking, and decided, with the agreement of the psychiatrist, to wean myself from them. But as I withdrew from the drugs I became unable to function normally to the point for example that I was no longer able to use the computer’s mouse with my right hand and had to shift to the left. I also became unable to write more than a paragraph a day and reading anything longer than a short newspaper piece was a pointless exercise. I started stuttering. Getting myself organized was a battle. I had to withdraw from the University. A QEEG revealed that the beta waves on all the sites were flat: they could not be distinguished from the axis. The QEEG also indicated that I had suffered from a brain injury to the left frontal lobe (the symptoms of which have strong similarities with ADD). All my medical history seems to indicate that this injury probably occurred at birth, with the forceps.

At this point the treatment had to be aimed at two issues: the complete disappearance of the beta waves, and the old frontal lobe trauma. Dr. Bolea suggested that I undertook, in parallel with EEG Neurofeedback, a biofeedback treatment with Dr. Michael Sitar. I did this for about 14 months, slowly recovering and improving. About nine months after the breakdown I was able to work for a good part of the day, but had to take a nap in the afternoon to get through.

Sometime during the treatment I discovered Dr. Nader Soliman, an MD who specializes in homeopathy and auriculotherapy (a medical treatment invented by a French doctor and which uses acupuncture in the ear). What was striking was that his diagnostic was similar to the one that had been drawn by Dr. Bolea (yet with a radically different diagnostic method). I thus also followed a treatment with Dr. Soliman, who used a mix of auriculotherapy sessions and homeopathic remedies, for about nine months. By that point I was spending an inordinate amount of my time going to medical appointments!

I received one day in the mail an advertisement for a course called Avatar, which might be best described as a spiritual program and which offered, among other benefits, to help one recover one’s attention and realize the weight of one’s beliefs on one’s life (the tools it uses present similarities, from what I know, with Buddhism and Neuro-Linguistic Programming). That caught my eye, and I registered for the nine-day course, somewhere in the Shenandoah. It was a nice and most needed break from all the recent trauma, and the experience felt as if the windows were being thrown open to let the wind come in clean the place. I believe it allowed me to let go of a lot of the emotional baggage and negative self-images accumulated around this brain dysfunction.

When I came back, Dr. Soliman announced at my next session that I was now fine (he ran a diagnostic before every session). And when I saw Dr. Esty, she also told me that in her opinion the treatment had come to a conclusion (had not told her of Dr. Soliman’s earlier assessment). What had happened in this medical journey, in which EEG Neurofeedback had been the core element? I had slowly recovered, regaining what had been lost after I had withdrawn from the drugs but also, I believe, improving on my previous modus operandi. How much I have changed is hard to say, since the recovery was slow and the whole process had been fairly traumatic (this medical saga, difficult in itself, was accompanied by the collapse of my marriage), thus blurring most of my points of reference. However, I recently did some consulting work at the place which I had left to go back to school, and it seems that I am much more effective in my work. Having passed my Ph.D. qualifying exams with flying colors I am now completing my dissertation, and working part-time as a consultant. Also my checks do not bounce anymore, and my life seems to be much more organized. And I hear music a bit differently. And there might be other changes I am not aware of, as they occurred slowly and progressively (the same way you can never witness a flower bloom – yet they do).